True Bread (Proper 15B)

 

True Bread
Proper 15B
18 August 2024; 9:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Homily Delivered by the Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

at the Parish Church of St. Luke the Evangelist

Grants Pass Oregon

Proverbs 9:1-6; Psalm: 34:9-14; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58

 

 

When I was a boy, we would travel to my Grandparents’ house in Idaho about once every year. There, we would eat wonderful homemade meals that were not common in my mother’s home.  My mother worked outside the home, and had learned to simplify her cooking in the 1950s and early 60s by using processed foods like Bisquick, Campbell’s Condensed Soups, and even Cheez Whiz or Velveeta in her day-to-day cooking, often using recipes that included brand-name items.   Not so in my Grandmother Audrey’s house.  There, they raised most what they ate in their large garden, and “put up,” as they said, much of their garden produce for use in the winter.   I remember the first time I ever tasted real ketchup.  It came out of one of the white glass bottles that my Grandma used to preserve homemade ketchup, steak sauce, and chutney.  I was shocked.  It tasted nothing like the Heinz 57 Ketchup I was used to.  This was too tart and tomatoey, with a lot of fresh vegetable overtones.  I wondered to myself how my Grandparents could stand such stuff, a weak imitation of the real thing, all because they were too poor to buy real ketchup in a grocery store!  It was only years later that I realized that my Grandma’s ketchup was far better than any commercially produced stuff, and in fact, was the real thing.  Heinz and Del Monte were the cheap imitations.  

C.S. Lewis tells a story from his own youth about this kind of contrast:  stealing cigarettes from his father’s stash.  Occasionally when the cigarettes were so few that even one might be missed, he dipped into his father’s plentiful cigar stash, which he kept only for honored guests.  He says that when this occurred, he and a friend thought “poor us, today we’ll have to put up with cigars when we might have had cigarettes!”    Again, if the only thing we know is a weak imitation, or a distorted shadow, when we actually run into the real thing we may think it strange, and perhaps mark it as the poor substitute. 

Today’s Gospel reading from John continues the story of the Bread of Life Discourse.  Here is how I translate it:

 

“I am the living bread, come down from heaven;

whoever eats this bread will live forever;

and the bread that I will give

is my own flesh for the life of the world.

… unless you eat the flesh of the Human Child before you,

and drink his blood,

you have no life within you.

Whoever devours my flesh

and drinks my blood

has boundless life,

and that one I will raise up on the last day.

For my flesh is real food,

and my blood is real drink.

All who devour my flesh

and drink my blood

remain in me and I in them.

Just as the living Father sent me

and I have life because of the Father,

so also the one who devours me

will have life because of me.

This is the bread that came down from heaven.

Unlike our ancestors who ate and yet died,

whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

 

When the Johannine Jesus says, “For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink,” the word in Greek used for “true” could also be translated “genuine.”  The point is that there is food and drink out there that is not “genuine” or “true,” like the free meal bread the crowds are chasing after, once they see the feeding of the 5,000.  Or like the mannah in the Exodus wilderness story.  Like the bread Jesus disparaged in Matthew, quoting the Book of Deuteronomy, “A human being does not live by bread alone, but by God’s word.”  

 

Jesus here says it is his “flesh” (sarx) that is genuine bread.  That’s striking! In Mark, Matthew, and Luke’s story of the last supper, Jesus says “this is my body” not “this is my flesh.”  But the word “body” in Greek (soma) there suggests a dead body, a corpse; Jesus in the Synoptics is saying “Over here’s my body, and over here’s my blood. Look, I’m going to be killed.  Eat this emblem of my death, and share with me the way of my cross. Then you’ll be able to share with me my conquest of Death.” But for John, the defining thing about Jesus is that “the Logos—the pattern and meaning of everything—took on human flesh, and lived with us a short while” (1:14).  It is the incarnation, the hidden, occulted divinity in humanity that was Jesus, that is “genuine” bread.  That’s why he calls his flesh here the “bread that came down from heaven.”  He is not referring to it as manna falling like dew, but rather, as God being made flesh.  It is Eternity contained in that single person—in the Council of Calcedon’s understanding, 100 % God and 100% human—that flesh, that we must devour (the Greek means “munch on”) if we are to escape the death that is the sum of our being human.

 

In this world, where we are so used to cheap imitations, we often think that we are trying to do the right thing when in fact, in our brokenness, we are doing its opposite.  And that applies whether you want “to make America great again,” or you want to build social justice in the land.  That is why we must look to Jesus and what he taught and modeled as our standard and our heart. 

 

The Evangelist John, in all his stories of signs and discourses of Jesus being true or genuine light, wine, water, bread is saying:  as good as the good things in our mixed lives can be, Jesus is the only true “genuine” thing we can hope to see in our lives.   

 

Jesus is the good from which all other things obtain their goodness. Jesus is the original, not the imitation.  No matter how sweet, beautiful, and wonderful something in our lives may be, it is a mere hint, a dim reflection of what God truly has in store for us, of who Jesus is.  And Jesus is the remedy for our brokenness and our mistaking imitation phantoms for what is truly genuine. 

Think of the things in your life that truly make you happy.  Think of the things that give you joy, and that take your breath away and make you weep in awe.  (PAUSE)

Today’s Gospel, through this sly remark “true bread and true drink,” is telling us that all these good things in our lives, these real points of joy, as wonderful as they are, are just shadows, perhaps cheap imitations, of the authentic, of the true, of God, of Jesus, of Jesus as God,  

The other scriptures today put a fine point on it.  The Psalm says, “Have reverence for Yahweh, you who are God’s holy ones, for those with reverence for God lack nothing.  Young lions lack and suffer hunger, but those who search for Yahweh lack nothing of all the good there is.” 

 

The Proverbs passage is an ode to Lady Wisdom, who in her beautiful seven-columned home offers a rich feast of flesh, bread, and wine to the wandering and lost.  Later in the chapter, there is a taunt-song against Lady Folly, who beckons to passers-by to her home as well, not with an invitation, but with a twisted cynical proverb “Stolen waters are sweet; bread you tell no one else about, delicious.”  And Folly’s home isn’t beautiful and glorious, instead it is a shabby shack over a huge trap door that leads to the underworld.

 

The difference?  Lady Wisdom shares and invites us to share, while Folly tells us, “You’re on your own; every man for himself”. 

 

The Ephesians passage similarly points to the difference between genuine and false, wise and foolish: don’t do things just to gratify yourself, but do all things with a sense of gratitude, thanksgiving, and song.  Share the genuine, the true, and don’t isolate yourself from others.  Sharing is powerful.  As a former spiritual director of mine once said, share a sorrow with others, and the sorrow is halved; share a joy, and it is doubled.     

 

This passage from John is talking about the Eucharist—the Great Thanksgiving; Holy Communion or the Great Sharing.  “Sharing” is what makes “genuine” possible.  As Paul wrote in the earliest reference to the Eucharist, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?” (1 Cor 10:16)

 

Genuine.  True.  It’s what is shared, not what is kept for ourselves, what is hoarded. 

 

In John, the Father shares the Son with us; the Son shares himself, his flesh, with us; and we share Jesus, the living bread, with each other. 

 

In Jesus, in the Eucharist and all that it entails, we find all that we need.  Now that is not to belittle other real needs. To say Jesus is the bread of life is not to say that we have no need to work to earn our daily bread, or to help feed the hungry with pedestrian bread.  But we are bound, as Christians, to share our trust in God, to share our love of Jesus. Share it with all!  I must tell you, despite all my failings, I love Jesus!

 

This week, I want you to take some thought about the truly good and wonderful things in your life.  Make a gratitude list, if you need.  And then reflect on what the real thing in which your “thank you’s” participate, where the true or genuine good lies. Where in our life are we accepting cheap imitations or pale reflections of the genuine, and rejecting the real thing?  Where in our lives can we be signs to God’s greater love and care? 

Jesus says, I am true wine, the bread that gives life, the genuine light, the living water.  I am the vine that gives wine; you are the vine’s branches.  Trust me. Have faith in me. Be fruitful and make wine for others.  Give them joy! I am the bread that gives life!

May we so live, and that each day.

 

Let us pray. 

 

Loving Jesus, you are the bread of heaven, the food of angels, the water of life, the wine of joy, the source of all life and strength:  help us to be true to you, reconnect with you each day, and find strength for our journey.  Enable us to love and serve our sisters and brothers and all those in between, and care for your creation. Lighten our burdens, keep us forever rooted in your love.  Protect us from losing our way, and bring us safely, with all your children, to your great hearth, home, and banquet.  For your tender mercies’ sake we pray, Amen.